M163 VADS / M901 ITV Tank Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the M163 VADS / M901 ITV tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" from Galeforce 9. This game is a followup to TANKS, and, as I would call it, a spin-off of Team Yankee. It contains a 1:100 model kit and some cards for the game.

First let us take a look at the plastic:

This kit comes in three sprues. The first two pictured are from the M113 box, the third sprue contains all parts needed for the M163/M901.
Just as the other TANKS kits in my collection, the kit came without any flaws.  All three sprues have neither sinkholes nor flash, any visible ejectormarks will not be seen when it is built, and there are almost no mouldlines.

On the first picture of the second sprue I marked the parts needed, even when you manage to build both versions from this expansion, I did it in this post, there are a lot of bits left over, the M40(?) recoilless gun would fit perfectly on a Toyota offroad truck.

After a look at the plastic, now it is getting interesting, a look at the cards which were included in this expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age".

First there are the two unit cards:

The M163 VADS (Vulcan Air Defense System) is a heavy hitter against unarmoured vehicles and helicopters, its Rapid Fire ability grants 7 dice against them. And an Initiative of 7 is also pretty good. The Scout ability is needed because this thing has only 3 hitpoints with an armour of 0.

The M901 ITV (Improved TOW Vehicle) is armed with a 4 dice missile attack, useful against all other units on the battlefield, and the Hammerhead ability triples the armour given by cover, but this is needed because this unit has only 3 hitpoints and no armour.

This expansion comes with 3 crew- and 2 equipment cards. This time you can use the cards for all nations except for the heroic crewmember, "Clarence Tucker", which is a nice addition, for 5 points you will get an additional attack dice (*), and when you reveal the card you will get plus 6 Initiative for that round.

(* hmm, feel free to correct me, but I think this would not work with Rapid Fire and Missiles, and then there is only the Initiative boost left. Is this worth the five point cost?)

The other two crewmembers are the "Daring Driver" and the "Superb Commander", who are pretty nice crew members which are worth their low cost, additional Initiative or a defense dice reroll is always welcome.

"Camouflage Netting" offers additional armour when stationary, while "Ambush" gives +4 Initative in the shooting phase when you discard it, both cards are ok for its cost of 2 points.

The last picture in the previous post show the M163 VADS built and painted and what I did to build both possible versions of this expansion from this box.

The next post should be a closer look at the BMP expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" and some small words on the recycling of the leftover BMP bits.

By the way, I found a small batch of pictures which will be added to some older posts, but this get a separate post.